


Morning

by magebird



Category: Trinity (TV 2009)
Genre: Canonical Character Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-03
Updated: 2013-01-03
Packaged: 2017-11-23 10:48:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,354
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/621273
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magebird/pseuds/magebird





	Morning

Dorian jerked awake an hour or so after dawn when someone grabbed him by the arm, dragging him sharply up into a sitting position. Too groggy and baffled to do more than make a thick sound of protest, Dorian tried to blink the sleep out of his eyes, squinting at whoever was looming over his bed, a dark shape against the morning light pouring in through the sheer curtains on one wall.

“Get up,” Maltravers said, his voice chill and steady. He was fully dressed, wearing his usual dark grey suit, and as soon as reached up to rub at his eyes, Maltravers turned away, striding over towards the armoire.

“What are you doing in my room?” Dorian asked. His tongue tasted awful, and he swallowed a few times, trying to clear the flavor of last night’s drinking from the back of his throat. Though the hangover he knew was coming hadn’t quite gotten a grip on him yet, Dorian still felt like he hadn’t quite sobered up completely and wondered how few hours it had been since he’d fallen into bed.

“There has been an incident,” Maltravers told him in clipped tones. Dorian could see him rifling through his closet and felt a brief surge of annoyance at his presumption, but it would have done little good to argue, so instead he shoved down the covers and swung his legs over to the side of the bed.

He’d been at least coherent enough last night to get his pants and shirt off, which was a relief since waking up in the clothes he’d been wearing would have been more than a little unpleasant. Someone had spilled a drink on him, he recalled, and he wondered briefly if he had time for a shower.

“What sort of incident?” Dorian asked. Maltravers had pulled out a few hangers holding the clothes Dorian usually wore to formal Dandelion Club functions, and Dorian’s irritation faded in the face of confusion. “Edmund, what’s going on? Tell me.”

“Ross Bonham’s gone and killed himself.” Maltravers reached out again, grabbing Dorian and pulling him forward so he could press the clothing into his arms. “Get dressed.”

“What?” Dorian just stood there for a moment, expression blank. “He’s what?”

Frustration flashed across Maltravers’ face for only a moment. “He jumped off the clock tower. Put on your clothes.”

Shock edged in to the buzz of background thought that had managed to fight its way through Dorian’s grogginess, and he still didn’t move, despite the impatience evident in every line of Maltravers’ face.

“I saw him yesterday. He’s not… He’s not really dead, is he?”

Maltravers didn’t even bother to answer, and Dorian didn’t resist as he snatched the clothes away again, tugging a white dress shirt off one of the hangers and starting to undo the buttons with crisp, precise movements of his fingers. He didn’t look at Dorian, his mouth set into a stony line, and Dorian took a step back, sinking into the armchair near his bed.

“Someone will have to tell Jonty,” Dorian said after a moment, and when Maltravers only made a noncommittal noise in his throat, he swallowed. “Oh.”

That’s why Maltravers was here.

“Put this on.”

Dorian took the shirt from Maltravers’ outstretched hand, slipping it on without really thinking about it, the familiar motion completely automatic. The shock eating away at his awareness had given way again to something else, a whirling disbelief. There had to be a mistake of some sort—

Maltravers interrupted his thoughts again, thrusting a pair of clean boxers into his view, and Dorian looked up at him, startled, before snatching them away self-consciously. “Pervert,” he mumbled under his breath, getting to his feet quickly. Under normal circumstances, he would have either stepped out of sight or deliberately tried to make Maltravers uncomfortable, but he was tired and numb enough that he simply changed, accepting the weight of Maltravers’ constant gaze without comment.

Trousers were next, and the urgency of Maltravers’ actions was starting to affect Dorian enough that he was starting to feel something again. Only nervousness, really, though coupled with his continuing mild inebriation and the way his fingers still felt weak and stiff from sleep, he had a little trouble with the belt. Maltravers didn't even let him try to manage the gold waistcoat by himself, just held it up so Dorian could slip his arms through and fastened the buttons while Dorian stared past him in something like a daze.

“We’re to meet the Warden in my office at eight,” Maltravers was saying when Dorian finally realized distantly that he was speaking, “She’s to accompany us to Mr. Millington’s room to break the news.”

“Why am I coming along?” Dorian asked, reluctant as Maltravers seized him by the elbow again and walked him towards the door, pausing only to snatch his top hat off its place on the dresser.

“As a representative of the Dandelion Club and, presumably, as his friend. You two have been close.” Maltravers reached out to comb his fingers roughly through Dorian’s hair, giving him a critical frown for a moment before shouldering open the door and steering him out into the hall.

There was no one else around this early in the day, and Dorian let himself be led without resisting, his legs moving at a brisk pace to keep up with Maltravers’ long stride. The reality of Ross’s death still hadn’t sunk in, and Dorian couldn’t quite bring his thoughts into order long enough to decide how he could possibly tell Jonty.

Ross was everything to Jonty, that much Dorian knew, though they kept the details of their relationship fairly private to everyone but their closest friends. Dorian knew bits and pieces—Maltravers was right, he and Jonty _had_ been fairly close—but something had happened that had made Jonty shut down and withdraw when it came to discussing anything to do with Ross. He still participated just as enthusiastically in all the Dandelion Club activities, of course, or Dorian would have been forced to intervene, but now that he thought about it, he couldn’t even remember the last time Jonty had voluntarily had a conversation with him about anything other than Dandelion Club business or the weather.

And Ross was dead. Before Jonty had thrown up walls, Dorian knew he had been as close to a confidant as he had, and he knew how much Ross meant to him. They’d met through a Dandelion Club party—Ross as a brand new member just being initiated into the group and Jonty as the newly appointed vice president—and Dorian could remember seeing Jonty lose some of his sharper edges in pursuing Ross, trying to be a nice person so that he wouldn’t be so completely at odds with Ross’ intrinsic sweetness.

And now Ross was _dead_.

Maltravers’ office seemed too brightly-lit, and Dorian stood where he’d been left, too distracted to consider sitting down or making conversation. Maltravers was flipping through some papers on his desk, leaning over to brace one hand against the wood. Dorian could tell that he was only passing time, waiting for the Warden to arrive so they could go and find Jonty and tell him the news.

Unless he already knew, of course. Maybe there’d been a note—or maybe Jonty had guessed when Ross hadn’t come home. Dorian knew they spent nearly every night together, more often in Ross’s room than not, and the thought made him frown slightly.

“Do you have something to say?” Maltravers asked without looking around, and Dorian’s frown deepened into a scowl, wondering what had tipped him off.

“Yes, actually. Jonty, he usually stays in Ross’s room. He’s been sleeping there the past couple weeks—“ It hadn’t seemed odd, at the time, but now that Dorian thought about it he couldn’t help but wonder if Jonty had known that something was wrong. “You should check there first. He was probably there last night.”

For a long moment, Maltravers didn’t respond, then he straightened and turned. The fury on his face didn’t make any sense to Dorian, but he took a quick step back, wanting to have space to duck if Matravers came at him.

“He was there _last night_?” Maltravers asked, his voice low and the words like lead.

“Probably,” Dorian said, uneasy. “Why? Does it matter?”

“Of course it matters, you _idiot_!”

Before Dorian could even start to figure out why Maltravers was so angry, he was striding towards him, his hand raised. Dorian flinched, stumbling back a pace and half-tripping over a low coffee table.

“I didn’t know it mattered!” he said, voice raised in sudden panic. Any defense he would normally have mustered in the form of a quip or jibe seemed to have failed in the face of his distraction, and he couldn’t focus long enough to try and do anything but avoid Maltraver’s sudden wrath. “I would have told you—I _did_ tell you, as soon as I realized!”

Maltravers took another step towards him, and Dorian ducked his head on automatic, expecting a blow or a shout—but a long moment later when nothing happened, he glanced up to see that Maltravers had halted, his face still twisted in anger.

After another frantic moment, Maltravers let his hand fall, and Dorian let out a sharp, slightly shaky breath.

“Pull yourself together.” If anything, Maltravers’ voice was colder than before. “We’re going now. There’s no time to waste.”

\-----

There was no opportunity for Dorian to argue as he trailed along close at Maltravers’ heel while the headmaster lectured him on how exactly to go about telling Jonty what had happened. One of his hands gripped? bruisingly tight on Dorian’s shoulder, but the slight discomfort gave Dorian something to focus on other than his own chaotic feelings (“mixed feelings/emotions,” “unfathomable feelings?”), and he didn’t shrug him off.

Ross’s room was on across the hall from a large window, so the door was bathed in a cool, indirect light from outside. Dorian felt his heart start to pound loud in his ears as he raised his hand to knock, and sensed Maltravers step away from him, hanging back and a little to Dorian’s right.

The door opened quickly enough that Dorian thought Jonty had to have been waiting for someone to arrive, but by the look on his face they were not the people he had expected—or wanted—to see. His eyes flicked towards Maltravers, and the surprise on his face clouded over into a blank mask as he returned his attention to Dorian. He was wearing grey pajama pants and a t-shirt emblazoned with name of Ross’s high school rowing team. It was a little too big in the shoulders to fit his smaller frame, and the sight of it struck Dorian silent for an instant. Then he swallowed and made himself meet Jonty’s eyes.

“Jonty,” Dorian said, “May we come in?”

For a second Dorian was certain Jonty was going to slam the door in his face, though there was no reason he would, but then he stepped back and waved them through. There was an odd touch of reluctance about the gesture, and Jonty didn’t return the nod that Dorian offered.

The room was blue, the patterned wallpaper broken up with a variety of awards and medals that Ross had won over the years, and there was a blanket crumpled on one end of the couch in a way that made Dorian think that Jonty had been sitting up, wrapped in it, only moments before. Dorian stopped a few paces inside and heard Maltravers close the door behind him. For an instant the image of a prisoner being locked into a cell lept to the front of Dorian’s mind, but he thrust it away quickly, trying to drag together the fragments of the sentences he’d been composing in his head on the way over and make them into something coherent.

“Jonty, I—we’ve got some news. Bad news. It’s… rather terrible.” Dorian stopped and cleared his throat, turning the top hat he was holding in his hands anxiously and staring down at the floor. “Won’t you sit down?”

“Where’s Ross?” There was something tense behind Jonty’s words, edging towards frantic, and he crossed his arms. “He didn’t come back last night. What’s happened?”

“That’s… what I came to talk to you about,” Dorian said haltingly. He looked over his shoulder at Maltravers quickly, but his face was impassive, and Dorian was forced to turn back towards Jonty again with no better idea of how to break the news than before. Jonty was just staring at him, waiting for a response. “Jonty, please sit down.”

“No,” Jonty said. His face was going pale, and Dorian saw that his nails were biting into the skin on his arms. “Tell me what’s going on.”

“Ross killed himself,” Dorian said, his mouth moving before he could think of a better phrasing, before he could do anything to twist the words into something more socially acceptable, into a euphemism that would maybe do something to make the blow less severe. “He’s dead.”

“No,” Jonty said. He sounded as though someone was choking him, and after a second of studying Dorian’s face he looked down. A shudder ran through him, and after an instant of awful stillness he practically collapsed back onto the couch, sitting with his arms still wrapped tight around his body. In Ross’s too-large shirt, he seemed disconcertingly small, as if all the confidence and swagger that he usually expressed had drained away in an instant.

“I’m sorry,” Dorian said. There was something wrong with the pathways between his brain and his mouth, and the words that would help fix things kept getting lost halfway there.

“You’re lying.” Though his voice was far too soft and distant for there to be much vehemence behind the words, Jonty’s assertion still made Dorian flinch inwardly, and his fingers tightened on the brim of his hat.

“I’m sorry. I don’t know what else to say.” Dorian stopped himself before he added anything about what few details he knew of Ross’s death and counted it as a plus. Considering his track record thus far, it was about as good as could be expected, and he took a step towards Jonty, cautious.

“He was fine. I saw him yesterday. He’s not dead.” The words spilled out of Jonty without any emotion behind them, and Dorian set his hat down and reached out to touch his shoulder.

Jonty recoiled visibly when Dorian touched him, and then surged to his feet all at once, his blankness gone only to be replaced by rage. He barely missed ramming his shoulder into Dorian’s chest as he lunged towards Maltravers, and Dorian had to scramble to grab the back of his t-shirt, stopping him before he could throw the punch he’d been readying.

“What the fuck—“ Dorian started, but Jonty interrupted him with a shout, something almost intelligible and touched with the torn edges of a sob Jonty was trying to suppress.

“You killed him!” he snarled, though there were half a dozen other words too mangled by his fury to be understandable. “You bastard, you fucking killed him! I saw what you were doing in here, I _saw_ you—!” He dissolved into cursing, struggling as Dorian jerked him into a more secure sort of grip, his arm crossed over Jonty’s collarbone and his fingers moving to close tight around his wrist, trying to stop him throwing another punch.

“Shit—“ Dorian hissed, glancing at Maltravers. He was strangely immobile, as if he wasn’t startled by the outburst, and was watching Jonty with an unreadable expression, his face utterly blank. He could been listening to the Warden drone on at a board meeting instead of standing in front of someone who so obviously wanted to hurt him.

“Let go of me—!” Jonty jerked in Dorian’s grip, bringing his elbow back to dig it into his stomach hard enough that he felt the breath go out of him. Gritting his teeth, Dorian held on. He knew it wouldn’t take long for him to recover, however uncomfortable he was, and it wasn’t as though he could just let go and allow Jonty to fling himself at Maltravers like that.

He wasn’t thinking straight. He was blaming anyone he could, the shock and the grief making him abandon reason and strike out at whatever was closest. That was it.

“I saw you!” Jonty snarled again.

Maltravers moved for the first time, turning sharply to face away from them both, “Pull yourself together, Mr. Millington.”

He all but slammed the door behind him, and as soon as he was gone, Jonty sagged in Dorian’s grip. He wasn’t crying, which probably would have been easier to deal with, just staring at the floor, breathing hard. His whole body trembled slightly in Dorian’s tight grip, and he eased up a little, trying to guide him back towards the sofa again.

“Jonty?” he said softly, and Jonty drew in a harsh breath. It wasn’t hard to force him back a pace, and then down to a seated position again.

“How can he be dead?” His voice had gone even softer than before, a little rough from shouting, and he leaned forward to bury his face in his hands. He still wasn’t crying and Dorian wished he would.

“I’m sorry, Jonty. I know you… I know how you must feel.”

Jonty scoffed. “Fuck off, Dorian. You’ve never loved anyone.”

Dorian felt his mouth twist into something like a frown. “Do you want me to go?”

Jonty didn’t look up or reply, and after a moment Dorian took a step towards him, reaching out to pick up his hat off the coffee table.

“Maltravers had something to do with this,” Jonty said when Dorian moved to leave.

Dorian paused, hovering for a second, and then sighed and turned back. “Jonty, you’re not thinking straight.”

Dorian couldn’t quite meet Jonty’s eyes when he looked up, but he saw his face harden. “You don’t believe me. Maltravers killed him, Dor. I just don’t know how yet.”

“Ross killed _himself_ , Jonty.”

“No, he _didn’t_!” Jonty looked like he might get up again, maybe even try to hit Dorian instead. “He wouldn’t _leave_ me, Dorian! He didn’t—“ Jonty cut himself off, pressing a hand against his mouth and looking away, fingers trembling. “There’s no note. I looked for something when he didn’t come back. He didn’t say goodbye.”

“I—“ Dorian hesitated, then stepped out of reach, just in case Jonty’s mood swung towards violent again. “I know you’d like to think that Ross… wouldn’t do something like this, but...”

He trailed off, and Jonty didn’t break the silence. After almost a minute, Dorian cleared his throat. “Uh, the Warden will probably come by in a little while to see you. You should try and talk to her, Jonty. It might help.”

“Ross is dead.” There was a numb finality behind the words, and Jonty didn’t lift his face to look at Dorian. “What the hell do you think she could possibly do?”

“It might help to talk,” Dorian said, uneasy. That voice didn’t sound like the Jonty he was used to, and it was a little unsettling. “I’m just saying.”

“Yeah, _thanks_.” Jonty sighed, and Dorian saw him fold in a little on himself, crumpling and hiding his face completely again. “Get out.”

It was all the excuse Dorian needed to flee, and Jonty didn’t have to ask twice. Dorian pulled the door shut behind him, glancing down the hall. He saw Maltravers standing at one end of it, watching, but when Dorian tried to meet his eyes he looked away, striding off in the direction of his office without saying a word.

There was no sound of weeping from behind the door, only silence, and Dorian grit his teeth as he pulled his hand away from the doorknob, forcing himself into motion. Jonty would be fine. The Warden would be along shortly to sort him out, and he’d come to terms with things. He could handle this.


End file.
